Posted on 06/20/2008 2:39:21 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
No money changed hands but Rogers Cadenhead, who owns the Retort, evidently agreed to tweak the offending posts to bring them into compliance with the AP’s guidelines. And what might those guidelines be? He’s not saying. Yet.
I spent around two hours yesterday talking to AP attorneys about their specific objections to the user blog entries in dispute, going line by line through the text to pinpoint exactly where they have intellectual property concerns in the short excerpts that were posted. I won’t reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on Monday…
If AP’s guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we’re headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use…
Although AP will be releasing guidelines, I don’t think the news service will be able to concede any ground to the blogosphere. AP sells headline and lead-only services to customers. Asking the company to concede there’s a way people can share this information for free is like asking the RIAA to pick its favorite file-sharing client.
The post on the settlement at the Media Bloggers Association corroborates that the AP drew the line at excerpting the headline and the lede paragraph, since “a large percentage of the value of what they deliver is carefully packaged in that content and so the publishing of that information without permission was a copyright violation.” If that’s the main guideline, plus whatever reasonable excerpt length they suggest (two or three paragraphs?), it won’t be terribly burdensome for bloggers, but like Cadenhead suggests, they’re going to end up in court anyway thanks to the thousands of user-driven bulletin board news-sharing sites online. AP headlines and ledes are probably copied verbatim a few dozen times a day at Free Republic and Democratic Underground alone. Add in Digg, Reddit, etc etc etc, and you’re looking at a galaxy of lawsuit opportunities. Exit question: Which lucky website will find itself the bearer of the golden ticket to federal district court?
Also the sites Free Republic links to that feature AP material have ads. A click from a Free Republic user will generate revenue just as well as a direct access to the original site. APs' position deprives their customer of those hits AND income.
They are working against the economic interest of their customers and themselves and do not have enough knowledge of the internet to see it.
Here we go again with that magic "Media Bloggers Association" that no one is a member of...
Sounds like a good plan to me. ;)
That’s how I read it, too.
Don’t back off, Jim. There are alternate sources. You were doing AP a favor with your links to their stories. They’re just too dumb to recognize it.
As the dinosaur media dies, they should accept all the little favors they can get.
My guess is that freeperdom is such an extensive network that there are a million ways to bypass the AP.
Just last week Free Republic scooped the entire media establishment in the US when americanintokyo posted a thread about a Japanese earthquake virtually in the middle of that earthquake.
They are anti - capitalists so that furthers their agenda.
How about the original story from the original news source before it was released by AP? It’s going to be word for word the same as the AP story unless they tweak it for their “standards”.
AP = AlQaeda Propaganda
I wish I was joking.
With the AP banning legitimate use of their news story from blogger publication, it creates an interesting situtation.
The AP can get away with publishing any nonsense they want and if you call them on it using the text they published; you will be sued for copyright infringement.
Nice, now they are immune from critique.
Free Republic, did the same for me during the subway bombings in England. My son was there and should have been on the train that was bombed, but he over slept. I called him and caught him just leaving the station because they shut down the subway. I was able to tell him what happened and to go back to his apartment. No one in London knew, yet, and it wasn't on the news here,yet, either. I think it was Mad Ivan that broke the story.
Free press is not free press.
News is copyrighted?? LOL! So is air.
Not that it really matters. But FYI.
Yep...his association of he and himself.Bloggers are independents by nature. What a bunch of stupid toadies that thought up that hilarious sham.
Can we boycott Reuters too...just cuz?
On the contrary, I'd say brilliant! Not that I think it's right. But he's certainly made a name for himself.
“You can't send a DMCA notice if it's Fair Use — and Fair Use is usually not a black and white situation. The fairness of asking for a link is indisputable.”
The essence of Fair Use is whether you are taking income from the copyright holder. If so, you lose. If we can show FR ADDS income to AP then they have no case.
“If AP’s core business is to report the news, blogs and social news sites send millions of people to its articles every day. Retort users have posted 41,000 links to news stories in the last four years, each link sending from 1,000 to 5,000 readers directly to a media site to read the article.”
LOL! If little Drudge Retort generates 1000-5000 hits per link, what does FR do? Jim, do you have a count on the AP stories that have been posted in the past 4 years?
"..In a hint that the battle with bloggers isn't over, Candenhead wrote on his blog that "we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use" if AP guidelines he's seen don't change.
In related news, high profile tech blogger Michael Arrington said he has sent the AP a bill for a passage of a blog post the news unit used when reporting on the issue.
A Huffington Post blogger also wrote Friday that a story she wrote about the impact of security regulations for gays was used by the AP without attribution..."
If AP continues to be hard assed the bold will land on them as Michelle Malkin wrote below.
That's much more immediate than an advertising boycott. I'm hoping it's more effective as well. Time will tell.
I posted an AP article yesterday in a roundabout way that seems to have been ok’d by the Mods. The headline was paraphrased and the body of the post was a link was to the Yahoo news search page with the article in question being first on the list.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2033544/posts
The AP is making the case that they are selling information. And, frankly, it's difficult to refute that argument.
Although IANAL, it appears that we're going through something of a rehash of INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE v. ASSOCIATED PRESS , 248 U.S. 215 (1918) updated for current laws. When information is the product, not the wording, then you can't even summarize the info without infringing.
If this is the case, though, it would impede the members of AP from generating content, as they would then have to be cautious of how they gather their own information.
I think it's a shame that FR doesn't have the resources to stick up for Fair Use, but, of course, many FReepers have shot us in the foot already by trumpeting that they "get their news from FR!" If the purpose is to comment on something, then Fair Use is valid ("to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism"), but when it comes to getting your news...then it's not Fair Use, and the information provider should be paid or not used.
Please make a prominent link from the Latest Articles page to a thread, special page, or something about the latest posting policy. Thanks in advance!
A large percentage of AP articles posted on FR are from sites that require excerpts only. Those thousands of sources have now lost thousands of hits because of AP’s reckless action. AP’s loss.
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